There was a slight pause while Carleigh thought fast and furiously. Nina walked on, insouciante. He was the least of her troubles.
After a little they entered the woods. Then he finished reflecting and took up talking again.
"So you are just flirting with me?"
"Only that."
"And yet you know as well as I do that in every flirtation there lies the seed of a pure and passionate love."
She shook her head. "Not with me. My flirtations are pure, but my passionate love is all seed—gone to seed."
"The seed can be replanted," he suggested.
"More than planting must go toward my future harvest. I tell you frankly that my spade-and-harrow days are over."
"Let me spade and harrow."
"Oh, what rot it all is!" she exclaimed abruptly. "I'm so deadly weary of everything."